Top 58 George F. Will Quotes
#1. He was one of the fortunate few for whom there simply was no discernible line between work and play, between creation and recreation.
George F. Will
#2. From visible habits we make inferences as to the invisible attributes of the soul. Therefore, statecraft is soulcraft.
George F. Will
#3. Bushism is Reaganism minus the passion for freedom.
George F. Will
#5. In this age of 'whatever,' Americans are becoming slaves to the new tyranny of nonchalance. James Morris
George F. Will
#6. Sex education in the modern manner has been well-described as plumbing for hedonists.
George F. Will
#7. There are no final words in science. But there you have the deeply anti-scientific temper of the global warming advocacy groups: Final words.
George F. Will
#8. In war the moral is to the material as three to one. Napoleon
George F. Will
#9. We used to be a nation that celebrated people who got things done. Now we celebrate people who stop things getting done.
George F. Will
#10. Americans would prefer that immigrants do their jobs and then disappear at the end of the day.
George F. Will
#11. The utter absence of proof for a proposition is proof of a successful conspiracy to destroy all proof.
George F. Will
#12. Liberalism is not fond of fun, or at least of many forms of fun that many people like.
George F. Will
#13. Avoidance of lunacy is an insufficient agenda.
-George Will on Ronald Reagan, 3-6-1987
George F. Will
#14. Government breeds more government, and a lobbying infrastructure to defend itself.
George F. Will
#15. In this snug, over-safe corner of the world ... we may realize that our comfortable routine is no eternal necessity of things, but merely a little space of calm in the midst of the tempestuous, untamed and streaming world.
George F. Will
#16. Who teaches young people to be so exquisitely sensitive to perceived slights, so ready to read affronts into routine events in everyday life? Their teachers no doubt.
George F. Will
#17. The argument that a particular project will be "self-financing" is usually the first refuge of politicians defending the indefensible.
George F. Will
#20. Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.
George F. Will
#21. Soothing assumptions about the good faith and shared interests of antagonists are natural to democracy, as is the desire to spend money on things other than defense. Getting a democracy to do what does not come naturally requires leadership.
George F. Will
#22. In Gladstone's mature years he lost faith not in God but in the ability of any government or state to act as the agent of God.
George F. Will
#23. Sport does not just build character, it reveals it.
George F. Will
#24. The almost-always-ghastly exclamation point has been lately compared to canned laughter.
George F. Will
#25. Institutions are lengthening shadows of strong individuals.
George F. Will
#26. In the lexicon of the political class, the word "sacrifice" means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it.
George F. Will
#27. Lacking an articulable defense of the cultural values under siege, he became a vessel of smoldering animosities.
George F. Will
#28. The most capricious modern entitlement is not just Social Security but to self-esteem.
George F. Will
#29. It is a distinctive American genius, this ability to transmute subversion into a marketable commodity.
George F. Will
#30. Coarseness occurs in a land where platitude inflames this sense of entitlement to more of almost everything, but less of manners and taste, with their irritating intimations of authority and hierarchy.
George F. Will
#31. Nothing is so irretrievably lost to a society as the sense of fear it felt about a grave danger that was subsequently coped with.
George F. Will
#32. Civilization depends on, and civility often requires, the willingness to say, "What you are doing is none of my business" and "What I am doing is none of your business.
George F. Will
#33. Get evangelical Christian made them receptive to the possibility of redemption in the here and now.
George F. Will
#34. The United States is a successful nation that is constantly susceptible to melancholy because things are not perfect.
George F. Will
#35. But one thing led to another, as things have a way of doing, and in 1948, when I was still not as discerning as one should be when making life-shaping decisions, I became a Cub fan. The Catholic Church thinks seven-year-olds have reached an age of reasoning. The church might want to rethink that.
George F. Will
#36. Author complains about the further submergence of irrecoverable history into a perpetually churned present.
George F. Will
#38. There is an elegant memorial in Washington to Jefferson, but none to Hamilton. However, if you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.
George F. Will
#39. The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
George F. Will
#40. If we could tax Americans' cognitive dissonance we could balance the budget. The American people want all kinds of incompatible things, they're human beings, and they want high services, low taxes, and an omnipresent, omniprominent welfare state.
George F. Will
#41. Washington DC is happiest when in indignation overdrive.
George F. Will
#42. There is no hatred as corrupting as intellectual hatred.
George F. Will
#43. Talk about presidents "taking" the country hither and yon is part of the foam of presidential elections.
George F. Will
#44. National Review's premise was that conformity was especially egregious among the intellectuals, that herd of independent minds.
George F. Will
#45. It is hard to remain iconoclastic when standing waist-deep in the shards of smashed icons.
George F. Will
#46. Time was when much of lawyering consisted (according to turn-of-the-century lawyer and statesman Elihu Root) in telling would-be clients that they are damned fool's, and should stop.
George F. Will
#47. Because of demagogues, rhetoric has a tainted reputation in our time. However, rhetoric is central to democratic governance. It can fuse passion and persuasion, moving free people to freely choose what is noble.
George F. Will
#48. Government could avoid having opinions about so many things if it would quit subsidizing so many things.
George F. Will
#50. Sandel hankers for the muscular debates of yesteryear, when government was not big but had bigger ambitions than today's bland Leviathan has.
George F. Will
#51. In times of change and danger, when there is a quicksand of fear under one's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present. John Dos Passos
George F. Will
#52. Chemical cheating will be decisively routed when fans become properly repelled by it. They will recoil in disgust when they understand that athletes who are chemically propelled to victory do not merely overvalue winning, they misunderstand why winning is properly valued.
George F. Will
#53. Speaking for George Will, on whose thinking I am world's foremost authority, I say: not necessarily. The heavy hitters do have heavy responsibilities.
George F. Will
#54. There is nothing quite like a dose of unvarnished history for inoculating people against the tendency to indict the present for failing to measure up to a sentimental notion of the past.
George F. Will
#55. Our hatred of government is not caused mainly by government's goals, whatever their wisdom, but by government's techniques. Philip Howard
George F. Will
#56. Economics has accurately been called the science of the single instance.
George F. Will
#57. Law, rather than harnessing the passions, is increasingly pressed into their service.
George F. Will
#58. People who have nothing much in mind for next week speak instead about the next century or millennium.
George F. Will
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